


Darling, Everything's on Fire

by scarletdancer



Series: When I was Drowning (That's When I Could Finally Breathe) [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: ADHD, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bad Parenting, Bisexual Female Character, Drugs, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Implied Relationships, Impulse Control, Lesbian Character, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:46:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24249769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletdancer/pseuds/scarletdancer
Summary: Melanie knew she wasn't broken, despite her parents constantly telling her she was.  She spent her whole life reminding herself she wasn't broken.  So then why was it so difficult for her to tell Emma?  Why was she so afraid Emma would look at her the same way her parents did?
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: When I was Drowning (That's When I Could Finally Breathe) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1727548
Kudos: 6





	Darling, Everything's on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I said a few days before the next work. That was a lie. My bad.

Emma was worried. Melanie had been “off” all day, and Emma couldn’t figure out what was going on. She’d been jittery, out of focus, and it was clear she wasn’t paying attention to Mr. Bryan’s lecture. Conversations were sparse and Melanie didn’t stay on topic for long. It wasn’t unusual for Melanie to have a harder time focusing or to be easily distracted, but Emma could tell it she was really struggling today.

“Hey, Mel, you okay?”

Melanie couldn’t think. Her brain was working at what felt like 100 miles a minute and she was struggling to grasp onto a single thought before it vanished and was replaced with another one. The scraping of chalk against the chalkboard, combined with her inability to process any information at the moment, was giving her a massive headache. 

“Yeah, Em. Just a lot going on in my head right now,” She said, trying to downplay her problem as much as she could.

“You sure, Mel? Anything you wanna talk about?” Emma asked tentatively.

“I’m fine, Em, really. I just need some sleep or something,” Melanie said. She did need more sleep, that part wasn’t a lie. Melanie had woken up late, her mom yelling at her to get out of bed and get ready, and was left without time to eat breakfast. What really caused her problems, however, was that she had forgotten to take her meds that morning. She braced herself, knowing the rest of her day would be painful. 

-

Melanie wasn’t getting any homework done. She had been staring at the math problems in front of her for at least half an hour without writing anything. She kept looking ahead to the next problem, until her eyes hurt from darting around the page so many times. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the work. She did. Melanie just couldn’t focus long enough on one problem to solve it. There were too many other things around her that provided a distraction.  
When she first got home from school, she debated just taking her morning dosage to alleviate some of her suffering, but she knew it would mess her up for tomorrow and at least a few days after. Melanie wouldn’t make that mistake again. Last time, it had taken her weeks to get back on her proper schedule. 

Getting up from the dining room table, Melanie started towards the kitchen. She passed through the living room and saw her jacket, schoolbag, and shoes scattered everywhere. Her mom would be mad when she got home. Melanie put her jacket and shoes away quickly, and decided to take her bag up to her room. 

-

There were clothes on every available surface. The floor, the desk, her bed; all covered in clothes. She dropped her bag by the door and set about trying to organize herself. Creating two piles, Melanie started to sort her clothes into piles. The sudden burst of motivation to organize turned up a number of unfinished projects and abandoned hobbies she had once fixated on. She found her sketchbook under a blanket on the floor. Thumbing through it, she found a few pictures she had started to draw of Emma. She sat down on her bed with a pencil and started to finish a few of them, hoping sketching would calm her down the way it usually could. As soon as she got bored or frustrated with herself, she would move onto the next drawing, until she had gone through all the sketches. It was hopeless; even art couldn’t calm her brain. Melanie’s stomach growled, reminding her that she had meant to get something to eat after school. That was almost three hours ago, her room was still a mess, and she hadn’t got any homework done. Head falling into her hands, Melanie silently berated herself. She was just about to head downstairs for something to eat when her mom called her for dinner.

-

Dinner was it’s usual quiet, uncomfortable affair. It was filled mostly with silence, except for Melanie’s leg bouncing under the table. The scraping of forks against plates was occasionally interrupted by stiff questions about school and extracurriculars from Melanie’s mom and dad. Most of the questions were directed at her younger brothers, but Melanie didn’t expect anything else. 

Janet and Michael Davidson got married right out of highschool. Janet stayed home and raised three kids, Jackson, Melanie, and Harley, while Michael became a big shot lawyer with his own highly successful firm. Uptight and conservative, they wanted children who would make them proud, and they did their best to raise them to fit into the boxes carefully placed around them. Melanie’s brothers grew into their boxes, but she never really fit into hers. Knowing she would never be good enough for her parents and for her family, Melanie grew up trying to reassure herself that even though they didn’t understand her, someone would someday. Her parents didn’t take an interest in her friends or hobbies the way they did with Jackson and Harley. Most days, she was okay with it, hiding in plain sight and rebelling in her own quiet ways. Some days it was harder, and she felt like she was disappointing her parents by simply daring to exist. It was hard for her to be quiet, Melanie was always making noise and moving, so she learned to keep to her room or stay out of the house where she couldn’t be ‘too much’ for her parents. Melanie knew that her family was the picture-perfect suburban family her parents wanted them to be, as long as Melanie herself stayed out of the picture. 

Her mom’s voice pulled her out of her rapidly spiralling thoughts.

“How was school, Melanie?” Her tone was cool and put together, devoid of any emotion anyone would expect from a mother. But that’s what her mother had always been to Melanie. Detached, cool, a mother to her only in title.

“Fine. I forgot to eat breakfast and take my meds so I’ve been out of it all day, but Emma shared her lunch with me so that was nice,” Melanie finished quickly, realizing she had provided more information than her family cared for. 

“You forgot to take your medication?” Her mom said, accusingly.

“Yeah,” Melanie paused, staring down at her chicken and potatoes. “I woke up late, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to.”

“You need to be taking those daily. Don’t let it happen again.” Her mother said, as if Melanie didn’t know that. Ending the conversation, her mom turned to ask Jackson and Harley about their classes and friends. Jackson, who was graduating this year and was a year older than Melanie, was top of his class. He would probably be valedictorian, if the rumors Melanie had heard were true. Harley was two years younger than Melanie, quite smart, and played and excelled in every sport he could.

Excusing herself early from dinner, Melanie retired to her room for the night. Collapsing on her bed and covering her face with her hands, Melanie desperately needed to feel like someone cared. She wanted to see Emma, wanted someone to hold her and tell her that even though it didn’t feel okay right now, it would be okay eventually. On a whim, Melanie grabbed her school bag and a jacket. She covered the pile of clothes on her bed with a blanket, and decided it looked enough like she was sleeping. It was unlikely anyone would come check on her for the rest of the night anyways. Putting on a pair of shoes and taking a glance around the disorganized room, Melanie resolved to be back before morning. However, on the off chance she wasn’t back in time, she grabbed the little orange bottle in her bathroom cabinet. She wouldn’t forget again. Finally, Melanie slipped out her bedroom window and painfully climbed down the drainpipe until she felt her feet on the ground.

\- 

It was almost an hour before she reached Emma’s apartment building. She wasn’t sure if Emma mentioned her mom working a night shift or a double shift or something tonight. All of today’s conversations and events were blurring together in the tornado that was Melanie’s mind. Not wanting to risk being sent back home by Emma’s mom, Melanie looked up at the fire escape and made an impulsive decision.

-

Emma jumped about a foot in the air when someone knocked on her window. It was 8pm, and she was sprawled out on her bed watching a show and trying to get her homework done. She stared out the window, and Melanie’s face stared back. After getting past the shock of seeing Melanie crouched outside her window, Emma shut off the TV and let her in. 

“What are you doing here? It’s freezing outside! Are you okay?” Emma grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around Melanie’s shoulders, and sat down on the bed across from her.

“I’m fine, Em, is your mom home?” Melanie asked.

Emma looked at her for a minute before answering slowly. “No, she’s working tonight. When are you going to stop lying to me?” It was an honest question, not an accusatory one. 

“What are you talking about?” Melanie’s voice became stiff, and she wouldn’t make eye contact with Emma. “I’m not lying about anything.”

“You aren’t fine, Mel. You haven’t been fine all day, and then you show up here out of the blue without even texting me first. I don’t know if something happened with your family or you just had a bad day or something, but you are definitely not fine and you don’t have to pretend that you are!” Emma practically shouted, throwing her hands in the air. Melanie flinched away, and Emma immediately regretted it. She didn’t want to hurt Melanie, she really didn’t, but at this point she was almost hysterical with worry. This wasn’t normal for Melanie, and it made it worse that she was pretending it was.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. You’re right, today was a bad day. I just didn’t want you to worry, and I didn’t… I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me or think I’m broken,” Melanie whispered. Tears burned in the back of her eyes, but she stubbornly refused to let herself cry. 

“You’re not broken, Mel. Everyone has bad days, it happens. It doesn’t make you a bad person,” Emma tried to reassure her.

“No, Em, you don’t understand. It was all my fault, I would have been fine. I just-” Melanie took a deep breath, “I forgot to take my meds today. I have ADHD, and I’m usually fine, I just have to keep taking the meds every morning, but today I woke up late and didn’t eat breakfast and my mom was yelling at me and I forgot to take them. And I know it doesn’t make me broken, I know that. But that’s how my whole family looks at me, all the time, like I’m some broken toy that doesn’t fit in there. And I don’t think I could handle it if that’s how you looked at me too.” Melanie looked down into her lap, losing the battle to the tears rolling down her cheeks. She glanced up to meet Emma’s eyes before continuing. “I was diagnosed as a kid, I think I was seven or eight, I can’t really remember. I wasn’t doing well in school, couldn’t focus to save my life, and of course that wasn’t good enough for my parents, so they took me to see a psychiatrist. They put me on adderall and ritalin, but now I’m just on adderall, and I’m supposed to take it in the mornings. I can’t take it in the evenings ‘cuz it messes with my sleep and then I’m not on my schedule, and I’m more likely to forget to take it again. My parents had me in behavioural therapy for a while, but I stopped when we moved. I’m sorry, Em, I really am. I should have told you.”

Emma’s expression was soft and gentle as she moved forward and pulled her into a hug. Melanie sobbed into Emma’s shoulder, desperate for the patience and understanding she rarely received at home. The girls didn’t pull apart until Melanie’s breathing had slowed down and she was no longer clinging to Emma like a lifeline.

“Thank you for telling me, Mel. I’m sorry you had a bad day. Will you tell me next time? If you forget to take your meds or something? I’m here, Mel, I’m not going anywhere. And you definitely aren’t broken, not even close,” Emma said, looking straight into Melanie’s eyes and reached out to brush away a tear falling down her cheek. 

“Yeah. I’ll tell you. I really wanted to today, Em, I was just scared and everything was too much. I’m sorry,” Melanie said.

“Hey, hey, you have nothing to be sorry for. I just want to be here for you. I want to know when you need help and what I can do when it gets bad.”

“I mean, today was just a lot. When I don’t take my meds I can’t focus, I’m so distracted, and I can’t hold onto a thought without moving on to something else. It’s like the world is an overload. I just can’t make my brain work, and it’s really frustrating. I ramble a lot, when I’m talking, I’m sure you know that though. I have a really bad memory, too. And I’m really unorganized, which is apparently really common,” Melanie offered. She felt a tiny bit lighter, as if she didn’t have to carry the weight of all her problems by herself.   
“My whole life, I’ve been too much. I’m too loud, or I talk or move too much, or I have too much energy. It’s okay, if I’m too much for you. If this,” Melanie vaguely gestured to herself, “is too much for you. I get it.”

“Hey, no, don’t do that. Don’t make this into some kind of stupid ultimatum. That’s not what this is. You can’t decide what’s too much for me, only I decide that. Melanie, you are not too much for me. You aren’t, okay? You’re stuck with me,” Emma stated, taking Melanie’s hands in her own.

“Are you sure?” Melanie’s voice was small. What she didn’t realize was that everything she was worried was annoying or ‘too much’, Emma found endearing. Whenever Melanie talked, Emma just watched and listened, enjoying the sound of her voice and the way her lips moved. When Melanie was always moving, always tapping her fingers against Emma, it just reminded Emma that Melanie was always there, always close.

“Yes, Mel, I’m sure. I’ll tell you if I need a break, okay? But this isn’t a dealbreaker, not even close. I care about you, and that means I care about every part of you, even the parts you don’t like,” Emma said.

Melanie looked at Emma as tears of relief overwhelmed her. Emma pulled Melanie into another hug. “It’s okay, It’s going to be okay,” She whispered softly into the smaller girl’s ear. Every few minutes, Emma would kiss the top of Melanie’s head. The girls stayed there on Emma’s bed for over an hour, with Emma holding Melanie and assuring her that even though it didn’t feel okay right now, it would be okay eventually. And for the first time that day, Melanie felt like the noise in her head was just a little bit quieter.


End file.
